A five-day Myanmar traditional medicine exhibition is underway in Myanmar's former capital of Yangon beginning Thursday, aimed at promoting the development of the country's traditional medicines and disseminating medical knowledge to the public.

With over 120 booths, traditional medicine producing companies are displaying their traditional medicine products and producing accessories as well as giving traditional treating service and medical education talks.

As the Myanmar traditional medicine is playing a more and more important role in treating diseases in the country, the government urges traditional medicine practitioners to protect and preserve them from depletion and extinction and to ensure their perpetual existence.

Myanmar is conducting research on treatment of major diseases -- diabetes, hypertension, malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhea and dysentery through traditional medicine.

To do research more effectively and on a wider scale to have the Myanmar traditional medicine standardized, the country holds traditional medicine practitioners conference every year to introduce the country's traditional medicines and its medical practices and the last conference, which was the 11th, took place in Nay Pyi Taw in December 2010.

At the same time, the practitioners are also urged to strive for the promotion of the standard of Myanmar traditional medicine to reach international level.

Encouragement has also been made to set up large traditional medicine industries with the private sector to produce potent drugs for common diseases, herbal gardens for medicinal plant conservation and find means to treat patients with the combined potency of the Western and Myanmar traditional medicine.

According to the health authorities, Myanmar has made arrangements for the development of the traditional medicine in line with the set standards, opening diploma courses and practitioner courses to train skilled experts in the field.

A decade before, Myanmar's Institute of Traditional Medicine conferred diplomas on traditional medicine to those who had completed two-year theoretical course and one-year practical course.

In 2001, Myanmar established University of Traditional Medicine in Mandalay, the second largest city, where traditional medicine, anatomy and physiology, microbiology and medicine and Chinese acupuncture are taught.

Meanwhile, Myanmar has set up the first national herbal park in the new capital of Nay Pyi Taw to grow herbal and medicinal plants used in producing medicines for treating various diseases.

Myanmar traditional medicine is recognized as one of the principal contributors to the public health and a genuine legacy left by ancestors.